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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Trial of Admiral James T. Kirk

While the trial of Admiral James T. Kirk following his theft of a starship and the “Whale Probe” incident that followed it are well known in the public consciousness, portions of the trial were sealed and classified Top Secret, in order to protect the security of the planet Earth, Starfleet Command, and The United Federation of Planets. What follows is a transcript of those previously secret portions, here made public for the first time.

President Hiram Roth: Admiral Kirk, can you please explain how you picked the late 20th century to travel back to? A time when nuclear tensions were at their height and the appearance of a
phantom object on a reentry path toward North America—such as, say, a
Klingon Warbird—could potentially result in the atomic holocaust of the
entire planet.

Admiral James T. Kirk: Well, as it turned out, Sir, going back any farther would have left us stranded. As Mr. Scott has already noted in his testimony, the high-energy particles used to restart the Bird of Prey’s warp core were only available in those decades when nuclear fission was used as a power source.

President Hiram Roth: I see. And those particles were available at no other time in Earth's history?

Admiral James T. Kirk: Not to my knowledge, Sir.

President Hiram Roth: Where do those particles originate, Admiral Kirk?

Admiral James T. Kirk: Ahhh... help me out here, Spock.

Spock: Mr. President, the particles in question are emitted by the collision of a slow moving neutron with a uranium-235 nucleus. In this case, inside the fission reactor of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise.

President Hiram Roth: Uh-huh. And where did the uranium in that ship’s reactor come from?

Admiral James T. Kirk: Couldn't say, Sir. The ground, I suppose.

President Hiram Roth: According to our databanks, it came from the Black Hills region of Wyoming, though any number of natural uranium deposits on Earth should have been visible to the Warbird’s sensors. What would have stopped you from using uranium from one of them, had you traveled to a time several centuries earlier?

President Hiram Roth: Admiral, need I remind you that yours was a time machine? You had all the time you needed. If it took you ten years to get your hands on that uranium, you could have still collected the whales and made it back to the present day exactly when you left. So in truth, you could have gone back a hundred thousand years, to a time when the oceans were filled with whales and there was no risk of catastrophically altering the timeline.

Admiral James T. Kirk: That’s certainly true, Sir. But why would I want to go into the ancient past to find whales in the wild, when I could go to 1986 and find whales in an aquarium?

President Hiram Roth: Because those whales hate us! Do you know what we did to them? People in the 1980’s hunted and killed their entire families. Their mothers, their fathers, their children were all killed by whalers! Even these two were nearly killed. And, in between, they were captured by scientists and kept in an aquarium barely large enough to turn around in. Admiral Kirk, those two whales hate our guts! You couldn’t possibly find a worse pair of whales to gossip with a giant alien probe that has the power to destroy us.

Admiral James T. Kirk: I, ah, I’m sure the aliens will understand that humanity’s past is in the past, Sir.

President Hiram Roth: No, Admiral Kirk, the aliens don’t understand that. Do you think they’d send a probe on a 400-year journey to commune with an extinct species if they had an appreciation for that kind of thing? Admiral Kirk, they do not understand that humanity’s past is in the past. In fact, top scientists have been working day and night to decipher the communications between the whales and the aliens, and... In fact, Dr. Bryce, could you take the stand and tell us what the whales think of us?

Dr. Randi Bryce: They think we’re major assholes, Mr. President.

President Hiram Roth: Do you understand now, Admiral Kirk? The whales think we’re assholes, and now their alien friends, who have the power to destroy us all, think we’re assholes too.

Dr. Randi Bryce: Major assholes, Mr. President.

President Hiram Roth: Major assholes, Admiral Kirk. What do you say to that?

Admiral James T. Kirk: Well, Mr. President... any number of women have started out thinking I was a major asshole, but their... opinions frequently changed with time.

President Hiram Roth: What the hell are you talking about, Admiral Kirk?

Dr. Leonard McCoy: He means he bagged them in the sheets, Mr. President.

Admiral James T. Kirk: Thanks Bones. You’re a big help.

President Hiram Roth: Admiral Kirk, are you suggesting that you will one day have sexual intercourse with the aliens who sent the Whale Probe?

Admiral James T. Kirk: I don’t like to brag, Sir, but if history is any judge...

Dr. Leonard McCoy: If that doesn't work out, you could try sleeping with the whales.

Spock: That would be consistent with his past behavior.

President Hiram Roth: I tell you what’s going to happen to you, Admiral Kirk. You’re not going to be sleeping with those aliens, for one thing. For another thing, I’m going to order the engineers over at Spacedock to cut out the most broken and dysfunctional parts of every Constellation class ship in the system and slap them all together into the single most broken, busted, dysfunctional starship in the history of the Federation. And then I’m going to name it Enterprise. And then I’m going to bust you down to Captain and put you in charge of it! And I’m going to keep my eyes open for missions that send you to the ass end of the sector, or to some barren garbage heap of a planet, or anything else truly wretched. And whenever I see a truly shit mission come up, you’re the one who’s getting it. Because when it comes to shit missions, from now on you’re the only ship in the quadrant!

Dr. Leonard McCoy: This isn't going to turn out well for us.

Spock: The outlook indeed appears grim.

Admiral James T. Kirk: Oh, don’t be so glum. Maybe this little project just needs the right director.